Out with a bang
Christmas is fast approaching, but
that hasn’t stopped the plethora of
great scientific papers that’s been
coming out of EMBL lately. In a
Structural and Computational Biology Unit project, several groups have
published in Science about the first
comprehensive picture of a minimal
cell (page 2); Mathias Treier’s group’s
‘gender-bending’ mice appear in Cell
(page 9); Jan Ellenberg’s group has revealed that fractals could be useful
tools to describe the behaviour of
molecules in the nucleus (page 9); and
Nadia Rosenthal’s group has linked a
key signalling pathway to heart development and healing (page 5). Meanwhile, Toby Gibson has been courting
controversy with his opinions on
over-simplified perspectives in TiBS
(page 8).

When a monk
came to
EMBL
page 5

Bernd-Uwe retires

page 3

After eight years at EMBL, administrative director Bernd-Uwe Jahn retires at the end of 2009. The
man described by Chair of Council Eero Vuorio as “a warm-hearted connoisseur of wine and good
food with a great sense of humour”, as well as someone “with a thorough knowledge and understanding of the rules and procedures of Council and the laboratory, who could be depended on for immediate and correct answers” tells Lena Raditsch about his future plans.

Winter Council meeting: outcomes
Intermedex adjustments, longer postdoc contracts, and some dates for
your diaries...
In EMBL’s final Council meeting in 2009, which took place in Rome, delegates welcomed some new
faces as well as saying goodbye to some old ones. They made decisions about the future ratio of
EMBL Health Insurance Scheme contributions, the length of postdoc contracts at EMBL and some
new equipment for GeneCore. During the next few months EMBL will be busy preparing the new
five-year Programme for the period 2012-2016, which Council uses to decide on EMBL’s budget.
More on page 2.

Winter Council
meeting: outcomes
MBL’s Winter Council meeting took
place in Rome on 24 November with
the following outcomes.

E

Health insurance
As of 2010 the ratio of EMBL Health Insurance Scheme contributions will change
to a third for employee and two thirds for
employer – as was the case prior to 2003 –
which means that the contribution paid by
staff increases by 0.1% of basic salary and by
2.1% for EMBL. Additionally, new provisions on additional reimbursement, physiotherapy and kinesitherapy, and dental
prostheses and dentofacial orthopedic treatment will apply on all treatment taken after
1 January. All medical bills should be sent
directly to the patient for authorisation before payment by Intermedex.

ATC opening
The official opening ceremony for the
ATC, to which science ministers of the
EMBL member states, EU representatives
and other stakeholders have been invited,
has been scheduled to 9 March.

Postdoc contracts
EMBL Council decided to increase the
standard initial period of EMBL postdoc
contracts from one to two years and to extend the maximum normal duration of the
fellowships from four to five years.

EMBL programme
The production of the new five-year
EMBL Programme 2012-2016 – the document that details the plans of all EMBL activities, including research, services,
training, outreach, technology transfer, administration and EMBL’s function in the European research landscape – has begun.
Based on this document and the corresponding Indicative Scheme, Council will decide
on EMBL’s budget for the period in 2011.

SAC reviews
The next SAC reviews are scheduled on
30-31 March for the Core Facilities in Heidelberg, 5-6 May for Heidelberg’s Structural
and Computational Biology Unit and 7-8
May for the review of the EMBL Pro-

gramme 2012-2016. Two new SAC members, Reinhard Jahn and Tom W. Muir, have
been elected to replace Herbert Jäckle and
Werner Kühlbrandt.

Other news
The Genomics Core Facility has permission to purchase two new generation
genome analyser sequencing systems to
meet the strong demand for this technology.
ELIXIR, the project led by EBI Director
Janet Thornton that aims to develop a panEuropean infrastructure for biological information, will be supported by a consortium
of member states. Two have made financial
commitments; the UK awarded £10m, and
the Swedish Research Council will give
€1.7m over three years.
Babis Savakis (Greece) stepped down as
Chair of EMBL Council and Eero Vuorio
(Finland) was elected as new Chair. Annemarie Frischauf (Austria) was re-elected
as Vice Chair and Reinhard Lührmann
(Germany) will replace Juan Modolell
(Spain) as second Vice Chair.

Collaboration reveals what a self-sufficient cell can’t do without
A collaboration of EMBL scientists past and
present have produced the first comprehensive picture of a minimal cell, based on a
quantitative study of the bacterium Mycoplasma pneumoniae that causes atypical
pneumonia – and found that even the simplest of cells is more complex than expected.
In three papers published back-to-back in
Science, research groups from the Structural
and Computational Biology
Unit – including the Russell, Böttcher and Frangakis
groups – in a partnership
with the Centre de RegulaLeft: Peer, who recently
received the Royal Society
and Académie des Sciences
Microsoft Award

2

EMBL&cetera • December 2009

cio Genómica (CRG) in Barcelona, uncover
the indispensable ingredients required to
produce a cell that can survive on its own.
Led by EMBL’s Peer Bork and AnneClaude Gavin, together with EMBL alumnus
and head of the Systems Biology Department at CRG Luis Serrano, the groups studied M. pneumoniae, one of the smallest
prokaryotes, complex enough to survive on
its own yet simple enough to represent a
minimal cell – and to enable a global analysis. “We found features that not even the
simplest organism can do without and that
have remained untouched by millions of
years of evolution – the bare essentials of
life,” says Anne-Claude.
Remarkably, the regulation of this bacterium’s transcriptome is much more similar

to that of eukaryotes than previously
thought; and although its genes are arranged
in groups, as is typical of bacteria, M. pneumoniae can selectively express or repress individual genes within each group.
Additionally, its metabolism doesn’t appear to be geared towards multiplying as
quickly as possible, perhaps because of its
pathogenic lifestyle; another surprise was
the fact that, although it has a very small
genome, the bacterium is incredibly flexible
and readily adjusts its metabolism to drastic
changes in environment. These are features
it shares with more complex organisms.
“Within EMBL’s Structural and Computational Biology Unit we have a unique combination of methods, and we pooled them all
together for this project,” says Peer.

Right: Bernd-Uwe (second
from right) and two of his
sons and daughters-in-law
enjoying a skiing holiday

“I enjoyed my time at EMBL enormously”
ernd-Uwe throws open the door and
with a wide, welcoming gesture, invites
me to take a seat. It’s a familiar scene in the
DG office: even in frantic times he folds his
arms behind his head, starts with a chat and
unhurriedly listens to your questions.

things he’s looking forward to. “For too long,
I’ve neglected my health and fitness, and finally I will have the time to go for walks or
go swimming,” he says. “I love gardening, so
by the time I’ve managed to prune my trees
and bushes, I’ll be fit anyway!“

“I had quite a good idea what to expect
from EMBL, and actually that’s why I applied for the job in the first place,” he tells
me. Long before coming to EMBL in 2001,
Bernd-Uwe began his career in the German
Federal Ministry for Research and Technology. During this time he served as the German delegate not only on EMBL’s council
but also on the governing boards of CERN,
ESO, ILL and ESRF.

His professional life often entailed lots of
travelling, staying away from home and his
family – and Bernd-Uwe is a real patriarch.
“I’ve got three sons and a daughter, and six
grandchildren with number seven soon to
arrive,” he smiles. “I won’t be travelling anymore; I’ll stay at home, and we’ll eventually

B

“Directing the adminstration at EMBL was
a logical step with which to finish my career,
and it was also a most enjoyable way to do
so.” Although Bernd-Uwe was always proud
of being a civil servant in the ministry he
greatly appreciated the working conditions
at EMBL which allowed him to successfully
shape the administration in a positive and
constructive environment. During his time,
new personnel and financial systems were
implemented and processes now run much
more smoothly, providing useful and valued
services to the scientists. “Before I came to
EMBL I held the same position at the HahnMeitner Institute in Berlin,” he says. “I
wouldn’t have wanted to go back to my previous role in the ministry.”
When I ask him what he expects from his
time after EMBL and from his retirement,
he can’t hide a certain melancholy. “If I
hadn’t reached retirement age maybe I’d
have stayed a little longer.” He mulls it over.
“No – it’s better to leave with acceptance.”

move back to the family home near Bonn. I
want to spend as much time as I can with
my growing number of grandchildren.”
He seems to find his peace of mind enjoying the simple things in life. “There are so
many beautiful places for excursions nearby,
and what I like best is visiting a nice castle
after a long walk and stopping for a bite to
eat and a decent glass of wine.” And who
would blame him?
Everyone is welcome to attend BerndUwe’s farewell party in the ATC on 8 March.
See page 11 for more details.

EMBL intranet: we want your news!
Got some news to convey to the EMBL
community?
A new section on the intranet portal
page is now being used for internal news
(see the ‘News’ section on the left hand
column on http://intranet.embl.de/
index.php). More immediate and flexible than the newsletter, it offers a further
opportunity to present your news to the
rest of EMBL.
As scientific stories are already covered
in the Press Releases section, the types of
articles covered in News might include
retreat announcements, building inaugurations, awards and achievements,
new people at EMBL, or announcements
about new initiatives or services. The
news appears on the intranet pages at
Heidelberg, Grenoble, Hamburg and
Monterotondo, so articles of interest to
the entire EMBL community are ideal.

Each story is flagged on the intranet
portal page for a day or two until it is replaced with a new one, and all stories
end up in an archive page for an at-aglance round-up of recent events (http:
//intranet.embl.de/communication
_outreach/internal_news/index.html).
If you have any news that should be
considered for the EMBL intranet,
please write to info@embl.de.

Also required:

pictures please

!

If you have an
y submissions
for the EMBL
intranet’s Pict
ure of the Day,
please also
send them to
info@embl.de
. They need be
vaguely EMBL
-related and fro
m any
outstation or
EMBL location
, and
preferably in lan
dscape format
(th
180px x 80px
on the web). Pe ey’ll be
rhaps you
have a cool sc
ientific image,
or a snapshot
of a recent EM
BL get-togethe
r?
No full-frontal
nudity please!

On the other hand, there are plenty of

EMBL&cetera • December 2009

3

Quantity and quality

Open doors at the EBI

Would you want to live a longer life? If you
could avoid some of the potential downsides
to ageing, such as weaker bones and memory loss, perhaps. Recent research at University College London (UCL) and EMBL-EBI
has provided an insight into the biological
pathways that can influence longevity and
healthy ageing. In a study mimicking the effects of calorie restriction, scientists reared
long-lived mice that were fitter and suffered
fewer age-related disorders than ordinary
mice.
The UCL researchers bred mice that were
unable to produce S6 Kinase 1 (S6K1) – a
key protein in a nutrient-sensing pathway
that enables them to respond appropriately
to changing food levels. The crucial link between changes to this pathway and the effects of calorie restriction was confirmed by
researchers in Janet Thornton’s group at
EMBL-EBI, who found that the patterns of
genes that are switched on or off in the mice
lacking the S6K1 gene were similar to those

More than 30 students and early-stage
researchers gathered at the EMBL-EBI
Open Day on 3 November to enjoy a series
of interactive talks and presentations about
the EBI’s cutting edge research, services
and working environment. The visitors
gained an insight into life at the EBI from
PhD student Heidi Dvinge and attended an
engaging talk on bioinformatics career
opportunities from Dean of Graduate
Studies Helke Hillebrand. The popular
lunchtime demonstration session also gave
visitors the chance to quiz the experts face-

to-face on the EBI’s core resources.
Comments were captured on post-it notes
(above), allowing the EBI’s Outreach and
Training team to monitor which aspects of
the day the visitors most enjoyed.
The Open Day is ideal for young scientists
or anyone else who is keen find out more
about the EBI’s activities, or who wants to
explore career opportunities in
bioinformatics. The next will be held on 4
March 2010. To register, please visit
www.ebi.ac.uk/training/openday.

A GIANT undertaking
EMBL Grenoble’s campus, the Polygone
Scientifique, is to be developed into a
world-class science and technology park –
an ‘ecosystem’ of innovation – in an initiative supported by the French government.
GIANT’s first construction projects are
already underway and mark the beginning
of a €500m overhaul for the area, which
has long boasted a top-class research infrastructure which includes the ESRF, the
ILL, EMBL and the CNRS, as well as three
centres of technological excellence and
several high-level university programmes.

With the planned new teaching and research buildings, recreational facilities and
meeting places for researchers, transport
links and sustainable housing, it is projected that the site will welcome 20,000 scientists and students and 10,000 inhabitants
by the year 2015.
The entrance to the site will also feature a
Visitors’ Centre, which will present the
work of all the campus’ scientific institutes
to the growing numbers of interested
members of the public using videos, models and interactive exhibits.

Photo:  ESRF

4

EMBL&cetera • December 2009

Even their immune
systems appeared
more ‘youthful’
seen in ordinary mice that have been fed a
calorie-restricted diet.
In contrast to wild-type mice, females
lacking S6K1 had a 20% longer lifespan, a
leaner body – despite actually eating more –
and stronger bones. They were less likely to
develop type 2 diabetes and had better balance, strength and coordination. They were
also more inquisitive, and even their immune systems appeared more ‘youthful’.
These results, published on 2 October in
Science, suggest that disrupting the S6K1
pathway can lead to longer lives and healthy
ageing, at least in females: males didn’t live
longer, but they did experience many of the
same health benefits.
If mice can live longer, why not humans?
Although this would be challenging to study
experimentally, bioinformatics could continue to provide useful insights; comparisons of the pathway in mice and humans
could shed light on whether they share similar mechanisms, for example. Looking further forward, software may one day be able
to model how calorie restriction may affect
humans, or to search for potential drug targets in the S6K1 pathway that could assist
healthy ageing. “The molecular basis of ageing is still far from understood, but it is clear
that bioinformatics will be an important tool
to unravel the complex pathways and networks involved,” says Janet.

Whatever next? The Dalai Lama’s French interpreter!

When a monk came to EMBL
Following his Science and Society Forum lecture,
‘Train your mind, change your brain’ at EMBL
Heidelberg, Angela Michel and Marlene Rau caught
up with Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard to talk about
science, Buddhism...and how to be happy

H

ow did you become a monk in a Buddhist monastery in Tibet?

I was doing a PhD [in Nobel-prize winner
Francois Jacob’s lab] when in 1967 I went to
India for the first time. I went back and
forth for many years, and then slowly realised that it was where I wanted to be. It
was like self-discovery. I decided that I
wanted to live in the Himalayas, and I was
30 when I decided to become a monk.
How did you become the French interpreter for the Dalai Lama?
He was my teacher’s student. Once I happened to be with him in France and he had
to speak in Tibetan to his English translator
and someone else would translate it into
French and he said, why don’t you do it? So I
became his interpreter.
You’ve gone back to science to take part
in some neuroscientific experiments.
How did that come about?
Some people from the Mind and Life Institute [in Boulder, Colorado] approached us.
Their research projects investigate the neurobiological effects of meditation on long

term meditators, and when the scientists
asked me to volunteer I said yes. The Dalai
Lama hadn’t known I was a scientist myself
until then.
How did it feel then to go back to the lab?
Frankly, it was mostly fun. I only do the interesting parts; they spend months analysing
the data and I don’t have to do anything. I
don’t have to apply for grants. I take part in
the exciting parts and not the tedious ones.
How would you describe the relationship
between Buddhism and science?
In some religions, some truths of science
don’t work. The universe being created in
seven days is a big problem for science. We
don’t have anything like that. The Buddhists
added cosmology, which was borrowed
from the Hindus – not a big deal. If it
doesn’t fit, so what? We drop it, no problem
– nobody minds. The main thing is about
the mind, about changing the mind and the
science of mind. We’re looking for truth –
we’re not trying to prove that a particular
truth is the truth. That’s why Buddhists feel
very comfortable with scientists.

You were once labelled the happiest person in the world.
That’s just a headline. It’s just the gamma
wave when you meditate on compassion. It
was after an experiment with 15 subjects,
and I wasn’t even the one with the highest
amplitudes measured – I just happened to
be the first. Of course I have a higher amplitude than most other subjects, but it has
nothing to do with happiness.
Is there anything that really annoys you?
You can feel indignation sometimes at people not doing what is right, but not in a negative way; you don’t want to harm anyone,
for sure. Sometimes I get a bit anxious, like
when I nearly miss a plane – but so what?
There’s not much you can do, so why worry?
What’s your cure for a negative emotion?
Well, it’s rejoicing, or at least not being affected by it in your own freedom. Don’t be
caught up in it. If you’re jealous of someone
because of their success it doesn’t diminish
that success – it just affects you, making you
the victim. You just need to free yourself
from that.

From fruit fly wings to heart failure – why Not(ch)?
EMBL scientists have been the first to link a
key signalling pathway to heart development
and healing, indicating that it may play an important role in heart attack recovery.
Almost a century after it was discovered in
fruit flies with notches in their wings, the
Notch signalling pathway – a molecular
mechanism through which cells communicate – has been proven to target heart muscle cells.
Scientists in head of outstation Nadia
Rosenthal’s group used genetic mouse models to uncover critical roles for this pathway.
When they inactivated Notch specifically in
the heart muscle precursor cells of early

mouse embryos, the scientists discovered
that the mice developed heart defects. Curiously, increasing Notch signalling in the
heart muscle cells of older embryos had the
same detrimental effect, uncovering different requirements for Notch as development
proceeds.

congenital heart disease.”

“The cardiac malformations we observed
are characteristic of Alagille syndrome, a
human congenital disorder,” says Paschalis
Kratsios, first author on the paper published
online on 10 December in Circulation Research. “Therefore, our findings could help
to explain the cardiac symptoms associated
with Alagille syndrome and related forms of

“Overall, these results highlight the importance of timing and context in biological
communication mechanisms,” concludes
Nadia Rosenthal. “Our findings also lend
support to the notion that, in certain situations, redeployment of embryonic signalling
pathways could prove beneficial for tissue
regeneration in the adult.”

Intriguingly, the scientists were able to improve the cardiac function and survival rate
of adult mice that had suffered heart attacks
by re-activating Notch, suggesting new therapeutic approaches to help the heart recover
from damage.

EMBL&cetera • December 2009

5

The great and the good
You may have noticed a strange new installation in the EMBL Heidelberg canteen one
day last month; a screened-off area away
from the hoi polloi (that’s you), behind
which some very important people in suits
were having their lunch.
The day was 19 November, the occasion
was the EIROforum DG assembly, and the
bigwigs were the leaders of the seven intergovernmental research organisations that
comprise EIROforum (EMBL, CERN, ILL,
ESRF, ESA, ESO and EFDA-JET).

The EIROforum collaboration began in
2002 and involves Europe’s seven most influential intergovernmental scientific research organisations – the vanguard of
European science – with the primary goal
of promoting the quality and impact of European research.
With research collaborations, conferences,
technology exchange and outreach initiatives – such as Science in School, Science on
Stage (see box, right) and the new EIROforum Teacher School series, the first of
which recently took place at CERN – the
partners mobilise their expertise in basic research and in the management of large international infrastructures to benefit
European research and development.

The future of one of EIROforum’s most
successful initiatives, Science on Stage,
was secured in October. Its international committee decided that the network of local, national and international
events to identify innovative science
teachers and exchange ideas and activities would continue even though the EC
grant has expired.
“I’m delighted that Science on Stage
has gained so much momentum,” says
Eleanor Hayes, who represented EIROforum at the meeting. “In future, the
national organisers will pass the flame,
competing to host the international
festival every two years.” The next festival will be in Copenhagen in April
2011.
www.science-on-stage.eu

Photo: Marietta Schupp

The meeting was held at EMBL because it
is the institute’s turn as EIROforum chair
until 10 July. The directors meet twice a
year to discuss EIROforum business, and
this get-together was especially important
as it coincides with the preparation of the
renewal of the partnership’s Statement of
Intent with the European Commission,
which outlines the joint activities and plans
for the ongoing collaboration.

Stage two

some of the year’s achievements by Lars
Steinmetz and Andreas Ladurner in particular.

Other issues discussed were the partners’
needs in relation to the new EU framework
programme, FP8, which will succeed FP7 in
2013. One of the ways in which EIROforum
is most effective is as a combined voice in
interactions with the EC and other organs
of the European Union.
Also discussed was the future of the
EIROforum-funded journal for science
teachers, Science in School, which is produced at EMBL. Later, the DGs presented
some scientific highlights from their institutes, with EMBL DG Iain Mattaj citing

BM14 approved
A consortium of EMBL, the European
Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF)
and the Indian government will take
over the running of the BM14 beamline
at the ESRF in Grenoble for five years.
ESRF’s Council officially gave the plan
the go-ahead at their meeting on 30
November, and from 1 January the
bending magnet beamline and MX experimental station will be run jointly
by EMBL, ESRF and the Indian Department of Biotechnology when an
existing contract with the MRC ends.
The agreement guarantees the continuation of this state-of-the-art Multiwavelength Anomalous Diffraction
(MAD) beamline, and will strengthen
links with the Indian MX community.

6

EMBL&cetera • December 2009

EIROforum members go Tech Transfer
There were more sharp suits than ever
before in the Operon on 18-19 November for the EIROforum conference on
Technology Transfer and the European
Research Area, which was funded by an
FP7 grant from the EC. Politicians, representatives from industry and members
of the European Commission, the European Investment Bank and the European
Patent Office gathered with technology
transfer professionals and decision makers in the EIROforum member institutes,
scientists from EMBL and other research
communities for the two-day look at the
business side of the scientific world.
Topics covered included technology
transfer (TT) setup requirements and EC
recommendations, as well the status of
the EIROforum organisations. Martin
Raditsch of EMBLEM, EMBL’s TT company, summarised that three of the
EIROforum institutes have their own
tech transfer organisations, one is outsourcing, and two of the remaining three

have policies already in place to allow
such activities to be developed. EU representative Tiit Jurimae acknowledged
the importance of TT and advised that
funding for it should be provided as part
of a research institute’s basic budget.
There was also time for some news
from EMBL’s spin-out companies. Joe
Lewis, Head of EMBL’s Chemical Biology
Core Facility and co-founder and CEO
of Elara Pharmaceuticals, announced
that the business had received an additional €2m from the BMBF GOBio and
the Biotechnologie Rhein-Neckar
Spitzencluster programs, leading to total
funding of €4.6m.
“It was a good networking opportunity,
and interesting to hear about the other
EIROforum members’ TT organisations
compared to EMBLEM, confirming its
good standing,” commented attendee
Jürgen Zimmermann, robotics engineer
in the Genomics Core Facility.

www.embl.org/alumni
The spirit of Christmas
With Christmas just around the corner, we
spoke to some EMBL alumni who help
bring festive cheer to the dinner table...

Winemaking runs on a yearly rhythm, which starts in
January with the cutting and tying of the vines for the new
grapes. Cultivating the soil is a constant job from March to November. In May and June the vines flower, and harvest time –
fun but very stressful – usually starts in October. Afterwards
our work moves more to the cellar until the following year
when the wine is bottled. We’re a small, family business; we do
all our work by hand and use the natural resources around us –
which is why you always have to stay one step ahead.

“

These two lifestyles work quite well together, as the busy
times for the photography usually fall outside the busy times
with our wine. The time I spend in the vineyard gives me inspiration and a new way to look at my creative work.

Whether it’s biotech or any other sort of business,
the basics of setting one up are the same; of course,
you need to have some expertise. I’m the only Scottish
person selling Scottish whisky in Denmark, so my
credentials are OK!

Returning to our Scottish roots after almost 10 years
in Italy, Alex [Regan – formerly technical assistant at
EMBL Monterotondo] and I moved into the Staghead
Inn, Fife, in February 2008. The pub was built in 1610 and
is steeped in history, mainly involving our resident ghosts!
I run the restaurant at weekends when I’m not at my job at
Edinburgh University, and the rest of our family helps
out too.
The Staghead is the focal point of the village. The first
customers to walk in were Bob (affectionately known as
one of the original grumpy old men) and Stewart, a brash,
affable Glaswegian; they continue to make us feel at home.
Another of our customers, JJ, flew over to Rome to play
the bagpipes in full Scottish dress for EMBL Monterotondo’s Christian Fasci’s wedding. We hold karaoke and
Celtic folk music events, and we have a very successful
pool team!

“

Then: Photographer in EMBL Heidelberg’s photolab, 2001-2006

“

Maj Britt Hansen

After EMBL I went into biotech, but when my
wife started the whisky shop and asked me if I wanted
to join, I jumped at the chance. We have a franchise
on products from Cadenhead’s, the oldest independent bottler in Scotland, and we’re the only retail outlet
for them in Denmark. We specialize in niche products
such as single cask and cask-strength whiskies. The
most rewarding part of the work is actually peopleorientated. Being appreciated for our service and advice is a great boost to moral.

When I’m not making the Frischknecht Schnapps – it’s
a family tradition – I work on the motility of malaria parasites. It’s interesting to note that malaria parasites are essentially inhibited by Schnapps, but you need a lot; at the
concentration that it’s bad for the parasite it kind of inhibits
the drinker.
Making Schnapps is easy: you collect whatever fruits you
have – 2009 was great for cherries – put them in a barrel,
and let them rot. Occasionally you open the barrel and take
a big breath – totally gorgeous! You get drunk even without
drinking if the Schnapps is good. The Frischknecht one is
absolutely biological. There’s no chemistry in there; just lots
of biochemistry, though, from the good bugs. But watch out
for the Drosophila (a totally overrated model organism).
Sometimes thousands fly out of a barrel when you open it.

“

Everyone welcome: March’s alumni reunion

The programme will include life sciences
and science and society talks, as well as an
EMBL and alumni association update. Social highlights include an exhibition, a

tombola of personal and EMBL-related
objects donated by alumni, and a tour of
the ATC including the Matti Saraste
courtyard.
A programme and an online registration
link will be sent to staff and alumni early
next year. Meanwhile visit the website at
www.embl.org/alumni/reunion for details.

Graphic: Petra Riedinger

You can try Maj Britt’s, Angus’ and
Freddy’s wines and spirits – or win a
three-course meal at Rosie’s pub –at the
next EMBL staff/alumni reunion on 8
March at EMBL Heidelberg’s new Advanced Training Centre (ATC), to which
all EMBL and EMBO staff, alumni, Council and SAC members are invited.

The event will be followed by the official
ATC opening ceremony on 9 March.

Every drop counts!

Graphic: Petra Riedinger

A big thank you to EMBL alumni and
staff, the Alumni Association board and
leadership for raising €2,000 to run the
John Kendrew Award in 2011. We are delighted with the worldwide response to
this campaign, which was launched in October this year. Donations were received
from ten European countries, Australia,
the United States and Canada.
Based on the success of this campaign,
we are confident that by 2012 it will be
possible to offer the John Kendrew Award
indefinitely. If 25% of EMBL alumni

ii

EMBL&cetera • December 2009

(1,000 people) donate an average of €50,
we could cover 75% of the €65,000 required to fund this award in perpetuity.
We hope you will join us in our goal to
recognise and reward more young scientists’ excellent research and science communication through your continued
support. All donors are listed on our
“thank you” page. Please visit our website
at www.embl.org/kendrewaward to see
how you can get involved.
Many thanks for your interest and help.
– Giulio Superti-Furga

A long night for Hamburg
When EMBL Hamburg scientists stay up
all night, you can usually find them either
slaving away at the beamlines or hitting the
bars on the Reeperbahn.

site of their new PETRA beamlines, presented several technological developments
including a live linkup to the MARVIN
sample changing robot, which visitors
could steer remotely, and a BioSAXS sample changer which was programmed to
pour colourful dyes.

On 7 November, though, they mucked in
to do the graveyard shift in the name of
outreach and education, when they took
part in the city’s third Nacht des Wissens
(Night of Sciences).

“It was exhausting,” says Rosemary Wilson, EMBL Hamburg’s Scientific Training
Officer. “People were flocking to the stand
to have a go at our crystallisation experiments and to play the interactive games to
learn more about DNA and amino acids.
There were entire families with children
there right up until the finish, which was
long past midnight, enjoying our kids’ activities like making DNA helices from
gummy bears. We sacrificed about 15kg
of bears for that, and everyone who
helped out said that they had lots of fun.”

The twelve-hour event saw all Hamburg’s
major research organisations and universities open their doors to the public, with a
special shuttle service ferrying the baying
crowds from place to place. The occasion
coincided with campus partner DESY’s
50th anniversary, so their special events
meant that the site – and EMBL Hamburg’s
stand – welcomed no fewer than 13,000
visitors in the space of one evening.
The EMBL team, who set up camp at the
The Petra III hall was lit up for
the occasion

Petra III inaugurated
On 16 November Prof Annette Schavan,
Germany’s Federal Minister for Education
and Research, helped push PETRA III’s ‘on’
button to inaugurate the world’s most advanced synchrotron radiation source.
For the past two-and-a-half years, EMBL
Hamburg’s campus partner the German
Synchrotron Research Centre (DESY) has
been upgrading its beamline facilities to
provide modern, world-leading services.
Out of PETRA III’s 14 beamlines, three are
being designed and built by EMBL. Now,
the completion and launch of the PETRA III
ring promises to make DESY and EMBL
global competitors in structural biology.
Minister Schavan joined Prof Jürgen
Mlynek, President of the Helmholtz Association, Dr Herlind Gundelach, Hamburg’s
Science Senator, and DESY Director Prof
Helmut Dosch to start the 1,150 magnets
running. “The collaboration between physicists, biologists and infection researchers
offer great opportunities for medical applications,” she said.
Thomas Schneider and Stefan Fiedler’s
teams at EMBL Hamburg are constructing
beamlines for small angle X-ray scattering
on solutions and X-ray crystallography on
crystals of biological macromolecules,
which will operate at a new integrated facility for structural biology (www.embl-hamburg.de/services/petra). “After a period of
internal testing we look forward to welcoming the first users in the second half of
2010,” says Thomas.

Putting the pieces together...and bringing the east to the west
This year’s EMBL International PhD Symposium on 29 October, ‘Puzzles in Biology
- putting the pieces together’, drew more
than 200 participants, some from as far
afield as Armenia, Israel and even India.
The list of excellent speakers included
Kim Nasmyth, Pierre Chambon, Stefan
Hell, the inventor of Stimulated Emission
Depletion microscopy (STED), and Ari
Helenius, winner of the 2007 Marcel
Benoist prize, the highest research award in
Switzerland. Topics covered how basic research can contribute to the understanding
of human diseases
and how diseases
can give insights
into basic biology;
how collaborations
and past results can
help solve complex

puzzles; and the promising new approaches
and techniques set to transform the rate of
progress in biology. The symposium also
provided a platform for the presentation of
the PhD Symposium Writing Prize, which
this year went to EMBL-EBI’s Diva Tommei for ‘The Dark Side of Stem Cells’.
“There was a big change in organisation
this year; there’s no more grant, and it’s a
difficult time to find sponsors,” says predoc
Peter Blattmann. “Nevertheless, we attracted PhD students from around the
Diva receives the
writing prize; left, the
NIBB visitors with
EMBL predocs

world, as well as many prestigious speakers,
and it was as very rewarding experience.”
“Organising it was exciting not so much
from the scientific point of view but more
from the personal,” adds Boryana Petrova.
“Investing effort in a concept and then seeing it unfold, with all its little problems and
successes, gives you such satisfaction.”
For the first time, the symposium was
preceded by an NIBB-EMBL PhD MiniSymposium, jointly organised by the
EMBL PhD and Visitors Programmes. Ten
predocs from Japan’s National Institute of
Basic Biology and Nagoya University presented their work with talks on genome dynamics, plant organ development and germ
cell biology. “Our predocs did very well as
hosts for the day, and really made the visitors feel at home,” said Helke Hillebrand,
Dean of Graduate Studies.

tidis

Photo: Christine Panagio

EMBL&cetera • December 2009

7

Right: “There are thousands of proteins which make hundreds of interactions; there
may also be hundreds of proteins which make thousands of interactions”.
(Figure prepared with the STRING server (http://string.embl.de))

interview

Turn off those kinase cascades!
EMBL Heidelberg team leader Toby Gibson goes public with a crusade
against the consequences of overly simplistic perspectives following the
publication of an opinion piece in Trends in Biochemical Sciences (TiBS)
Toby, what’s all this about?
It’s an ongoing debate about the issue of
oversimplification in biology. You have to be
reductionist in science in order to be able to
devise experiments. You need to fix many
aspects of a system and then you perturb
just one thing and see what happens. Later,
you might forget that you’ve fixed so much
that you’re not invoking so many of the
things that could happen – that could play
roles in overall regulation – because you’re
only looking at one aspect.
Is this a new idea?
Physicist Niels Bohr considered truth and
clarity to be complementary. The term cooperativity – multiple binding interactions
that influence each other positively or negatively – is quite old. Classical biochemists
working on enzymes have known about it
for a long time. You can’t have biological
complexity without cooperativity, and you
cannot have robustness without a complicated system. The only way to be robust is
with complicated decision-making, not
based on a single parameter.
What consequences does this have?
Firstly, that kinases cannot cascade. If you
start seeing cell regulation as highly net-

worked, highly cooperative and also highly
redundant, then it’s not hard to see that
there’s a need in certain parts of medicine
for multi-drug therapy. Cancer cells remove
cooperativity to simplify key pathways: They
actually become less robust than healthy
cells. With one drug you may kill most cancer cells; but in others, there’ll always be mutations in there that can circumvent it and
use another way to achieve the same thing.
In multi-drug therapy, you try to hit everything that a cancer cell regards as important.
If you knew enough about a cancer cell –
not just that it gets a growth factor signal,
but about its pathways that suppress apoptosis, and about its metastasis – and you hit
the right pathways for this cancer, then you
have a chance of knocking out the whole cell
population. The corollary is that the healthy
cells are more robust and may survive the
therapy much better than the cancer cells.
So what can be done about it?
Currently, cell system models are too simple.
If wet lab people don’t tell the modellers that
systems are cooperative, of course they won’t
model them that way. But people on the
bench say ‘I’ve just found that a binds to b,
and that’s all I need to know. I don’t need to

How can we feed the world?
A record number of 270 participants heard
about the contribution plant science can
make to the global challenge of food security in a growing world population at the
EMBO/EMBL Science & Society conference
on 6-7 November at EMBL.
The two-day event, ‘Food, Sustainability
and Plant Science: A Global Challenge’
looked at food shortage, which – next to climate change – is the greatest challenge facA farmer
from the
Indian state
of
Maharashtra
in a field
planted with
genetically
modified BT
cotton

8

EMBL&cetera • December 2009

know
that another ten
molecules are
binding to modulate that.’ In fact you do, but
they rather hope the system is simpler, because then they’ve understood it.
There’s a story I like to tell: it’s the inaugural lecture for the first ever cellular systems
biology course. The eminent professor kicks
things off with the old joke, “Bacteria are
just a bag of enzymes!” The students are delighted: “Hey, I know how to model that.”
And so it has been ever since, the larger eukaryotic cells then simply being modelled as
a bigger bag with some pockets in it.
How will you be addressing this issue?
There’s a standard that defines how we put
interaction data into the computer, and this
has nothing about cooperativity in it, so we
can’t capture at the very first step that someone has found cooperativity. One of the
things I’m hoping to do next year is to start
working on that. I’ve already been talking to
standards people at the EBI about it.
You can read Toby’s article at
www.cell.com/trends/biochemical-sciences/
fulltext/S0968-0004%2809%2900142-X

Scientists, journalists and politicians discuss
the future of sustainable agriculture

ing the world. To stay on top of the worldwide food supply for nine billion people in
2050, the production of staple crops has to
increase by at least 50 per cent. Already
today, more than one billion people in the
world are hungry. The green revolution,
which started in the fifties, tripled the world
food production, but resulted in a dependence on very few strains of major food
crops. What’s worse, 40 percent of the arable
land has become seriously degraded and infertile and biodiversity has sharply declined.
According to Sir David Baulcombe, University of Cambridge, the existing agricultural production system is operating close to
full capacity. The threatened worldwide
food supply calls for innovative technologies
to breed new strains of robust and efficient
plants: crops resistant to flooding, draught,

salination and pests as well as high yielding
crops enriched with micronutrients and vitamins. Pamela Ronald of the University of
California, Davis, said: “There are not
enough breeders in general. It’s almost like
where we were ten years ago with bioinformatics.” Plant breeders and researchers deplore the lack of young scientists interested
in these topics.
European public and policy makers largely
ignore the impending crisis. As a consequence, public funding and support for
plant and agricultural research are low and
plant breeding is left to big industry that
holds a quasi monopoly and most of the exclusive commercial rights. Sir David
Baulcombe called for scientists to become
political and alert policy makers and the
public to the crisis. – G. Wallon & Y. Kaul

When biology meets maths
head of the Cell Biology and Biophysics
Unit.

Research from Jan Ellenberg’s group at
EMBL Heidelberg has revealed that fractals
– fragmented shapes made up of reducedsize copies of the whole – could be useful
mathematical tools to describe the behaviour of molecules in the nucleus.

The team then watched how different proteins moved and bound to euchromatin and
heterochromatin. They found that euchromatin shows a high fractal dimension,
which means it exposes a large, rough surface to the molecules. In contrast, heterochromatin’s low fractal dimension makes
it smoother and flatter, with a smaller exposed surface.

The nucleus of eukaryotes is enriched in
DNA, proteins and RNA, and is thus
thought to be a crowded area. In vitro, it has
been shown that molecular crowding
strongly affects protein dynamics but
whether this is also relevant in vivo remains
unclear. In a study published on 16 December in the EMBO Journal, postdocs
Sébastien Huet and Aurélien Bancaud followed the movement of fluorescent molecules in living cells, and saw that they
moved as if having to navigate obstacles.
Comparing the pattern of movement of different-sized molecules, they found that large
molecules moved according to
the same rules as small ones.

“This could help to explain how the cell
tweaks the behaviour of the proteins that
control DNA,” says Sébastien. “The nucleus
might be able to switch the way proteins
look for targets on chromatin simply by altering the fractal structure of chromatin.”

A gene called Foxl2, which is located on
a non-sex chromosome and therefore
present in both sexes, was known to play
an important role in the female pathway,
but its precise function remained elusive.
When Mathias Treier’s group turned off
this gene in the ovaries of adult female
mice, they found that cells in the ovaries
turned into cells typically found in testes.
“We were surprised,” says Mathias, who

Göran came to EMBL in 2001, first as part
of the Swedish Audit Group for EMBL,
EMBC and EMBO and then, as of 2004, as
an external Auditor for EU Grants. Between
1969 and 2005 he held various senior positions at the Swedish National Audit Office.
Göran was a highly regarded professional
with a strong sense of duty and commitment. He quickly grasped the spirit of
EMBL and embodied it in his work and actions, and we had the privilege to know
Göran as a kind and helpful colleague with
a good sense of humour. He will be greatly
missed.

Flu fighter
A new EMBL spin-out company, Savira
Pharmaceuticals (www.savira.at), will focus
on the development of drugs for the treatment of influenza.

Gender-bending mice

In humans and most other mammals, an
individual’s sex is determined by its sex
chromosomes: females have two X chromosomes, and males have an X and a Y.
Scientists had long assumed that the female pathway – the development of
ovaries and all the other female traits –
was the default: if an embryo had a gene
called Sry, which is located on the Y chromosome, it would develop into a male; if
not, then the result would be a female.

We regretfully inform the EMBL community that our colleague, Göran Wikell, died
on 21 November in Heidelberg.

Left: A cell displays chromatin (green) and a
molecule used for tracking (red). Right: A closer
look at the fractal architecture of chromatin

This result suggested that
these molecules were ‘seeing’
the same crowded environment, regardless of scale; that
their environment, in fact, was
fractal. “It’s like a system of
branched channels resembling
a coastline,” says Jan, who’s

EMBL researchers have uncovered the
gene responsible for keeping females female in a study published on 11 December
in Cell.

obituary

collaborated with colleagues from the
MRC’s National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR), in Mill Hill, UK, for the
study. “We expected the mice to stop producing oocytes, but what happened was
much more dramatic: somatic cells which
support the developing egg took on the
characteristics of cells which usually support developing sperm, and female hormone-producing cells switched to the
male type.” This challenges the long-held
assumption that the development of female traits is a default pathway, showing
that the male pathway needs to be actively
suppressed, and also grants a valuable insight into how sex determination evolved.
These findings will have wide-ranging
implications for reproductive medicine
and may help to treat sex differentiation
disorders in children or understand the
masculinising effects of menopause on
some women. The study is discussed by
Mathias in a Cell ‘PaperFlicks’ video on
YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?
v=-oL7RKUNchY.

Co-founded in September by EMBL and
the Vienna-based biotech company
onepharm Research and Development
GmbH, Savira will build on the breakthrough results from Stephen Cusack´s lab
where they identified the molecular architecture of the cap-binding domain in the
PB2 in the PA subunit of the influenza viral
polymerase.
These findings, in which Darren Hart’s
group at EMBL Grenoble and EMBL Heidelberg’s Chemical Biology Core Facility
were also involved, open new avenues for
the structure-based development of anti-influenza drugs, targeting the viral polymerase
to selectively stop the reproductive cycle.
Savira’s development pipeline of selective inhibitors will be fuelled from three different
medicinal chemistry programmes and will
draw on the know-how and intellectual
property of the founders. “We believe that
Savira is the perfect vehicle to translate our
basic research results into urgently needed
drug candidates to combat both seasonal
and pandemic influenza,” says Martin Raditsch, Deputy Managing Director of EMBLEM, EMBL’s technology transfer
company.
Savira, which is based in Vienna, received
€1m support from the Austria Wirtschaftsservice (AWS) and was awarded third place
by the City of Vienna Future Award (Wiener
Zukunftspreis 2009) in the category ‘Newcomers and Start-ups’.

EMBL&cetera • December 2009

9

Photos:
Christine
Panagiotidis

Researchers from the Medical Faculty of the
University of Heidelberg got together with
EMBL scientists on 27 November for the 5th
Molecular Medicine Partnership Unit
(MMPU) Research Day.
Predocs, postdocs and physicians from the
five MMPU groups – which are headed by
one group leader from EMBL together with
one from the Medical Faculty – presented
their recent findings on understanding RNA
quality control by NMD, paediatric brain tumours, lung diseases, colon tumours and
regulators in cholesterol uptake.
The partnership, which was set up in 2002
by EMBL’s Matthias Hentze and Andreas
Kulozik from the Angelika-Lautenschläger

Open doors at
the MMPU

ELLS in Genoa

Hospital for Children and Adolescents at
Heidelberg University, aims to strengthen
the link between molecular research and
medicine by combining studies of the basis
of common human diseases with applications in diagnosis and therapy.

In October European Learning Laboratory for the Life Sciences (ELLS) officers Rossana De Lorenzi and new
recruit Tommaso Nastasi from EMBL
Monterondo took part in one of Italy’s
biggest scientific outreach events,
Genoa’s Festival della Scienza.

“The MMPU Research Day, held twice a
year, is becoming a conference not only for
MMPU members but also for the medical
and scientific community in Heidelberg,”
says Britta Schläger, who supports the management of the MMPU. “It’s a platform for a
broad scientific audience to learn about the
latest translational projects of the groups
and to get in contact with EMBL scientists,
as well as with Medical Faculty clinicians.”

The MMPU Research Day: What did you think?
“It’s an opportunity to hear from the
“The open day has provided an
other groups and see how we might
opportunity for students in the
collaborate in the future. It’s also nice
MMPU groups to present their
to be in the new ATC!” – Marcus Mall,
data in a relaxed atmosphere,
MMPU group leader. Recently
despite the very tight schedule!” –
became the first ever recipient of a Heisenberg
Heiko Runz, MMPU group leader, Heidelberg
Professorship at Heidelberg’s Medical Faculty
University
“I’m used to always talking to
clinicians, so an audience of basic
researchers is a real change. The
MMPU bridges the gap between
the two very effectively.” – Guest
speaker Stefan Pfister, DKFZ

In the hallowed surroundings of the
church of Sant’Agostino, Rossana
(below left) and Tommaso used a
newly-developed activity, ‘Naturally
unbiased’, to introduce some of the
200,000 festival-goers to the world of
microbes. Participants were helped to
observe microbes in their own saliva
and from yoghurt, after which they
learnt about how sequencing is producing an ever-growing bulk of data
and allowing scientists to discover new
microorganisms and functions.

“It’s a great way for me to get
some insights into the work of the
MMPU, as I’m planning to join
Heiko’s group downtown as a
postdoc.” – Carolina Tangemo,
EMBL PhD student, Pepperkok team

Building bridges: the Postdoc Retreat
etreat (n): 1. the forced or strategic
withdrawal of an armed force before an
enemy; 2. an asylum for the insane; 3. period of retirement for religious exercises, mediation or study’. For the 84 EMBL postdocs
who made the journey to Lago Maggiore on
4-6 November, their annual getaway was a
combination of at least two of these three.

‘R

10

EMBL&cetera • December 2009

“The overwhelming success of this year’s
retreat is thanks to everyone lending a hand
to make sure everything went smoothly,”
says Sebastian
Glatt, who led the
organising committee. “I’d also
like to thank
EICAT for covering the rise in attendance so that
we didn’t have to
be limited to 60
people.”

Held at the Hotel de Palma in Stresa, Italy
– the midpoint between Heidelberg, Monterotondo and Grenoble – this year’s retreat
enjoyed a rise in attendance, especially from
the outstations. As well as being a chance for
postdocs to get away from it, hear all about
each others’ work and network with their
peers, the event boasted distinguished and
inspiring speakers in the shape of Lewis
Wolpert, Miroslav Radman and EMBL
alumnus Carlo Petosa. While Lewis sparked
a very philosophical discussion with his talk
on causal beliefs, Miroslav challenged the
audience with his creative, high-risk research, and Carlo calmed frayed postdoc
nerves with a comforting story of how a Nature paper really gets written.

The location certainly lent itself to relaxation and reflection. When they weren’t
busy in the scientific sessions, the postdocs
enjoyed several dips in the hotel’s panoramic
jacuzzi, as well as a boat trip to neighbouring islands. “It presented all the eerie charm
of a deserted tourist trap off-season, and was
even devoid of locals,” comments Remco
Loos. “It’s not every day your conference
poster gets reflected in a set of gold-framed
baroque mirrors,” adds Aidan Budd.

newsinbrief
✏ Registration is open for the following
EBI hands-on bioinformatics training courses to help you get to grips
with your data: ‘Programmatic access
to biological databases (Perl)’ on 2226 February (registration closes 21
January); ‘Plant bioinformatics’ on
29-31 March (closes 26 February);
and the EMBO Practical Course, ‘In
silico systems biology: network reconstruction, analysis and networkbased modelling’, on 10-13 April
(closes 26 February). For details see
www.ebi.ac.uk/training/handson.

Give something
back to the EIPP!
questions and formulate hypotheses
when they’re studying science,” explains Julia Willingale-Theune, Head
of ELLS. “It’s not a subject that should
be taught dryly, straight from a textbook.” iNEXT is funded by the
Robert-Bosch-Stiftung.

✏ A delegation of visitors from Jiangsu
province in China visited EMBL
Heidelberg on 6 November as part of
a tour of the institutes and biotech
spots in the city. The visitors, who

✏ EMBO would like to invite scientists
to help shape the programme of The
EMBO Meeting 2011 in Vienna (1013 September) by contributing to the
workshop sessions. Proposals are invited from scientists who have ideas
on new perspectives on any life science topic of interest to broad audiences. Single workshops, but also a
series of related workshops held over
consecutive days may be proposed.
search. For more details see
http://2011.the-embo-meeting.org.

✏ 15 international journalists visited
EMBL as part of a conference,
'Biotechnology and its impact on society', organised by the International
Journalist Programme Initiative.
After an introduction by Head of International Relations and Communications Silke Schumacher, group
leader Francesca Peri presented her
research, and then the visitors toured
lab facilities and were impressed by
the architecture of the ATC.

✏ The new ATC teaching lab was used
for the first time when EMBL’s European Learning Laboratory for the Life
Sciences (ELLS) invited 40 students
from Heidelberg-area schools to an
iNEXT event on 5-6 November. The
Interactive Network for Experimental
Training (iNEXT) aims to develop
more ‘inquiry-based’ materials and
methods for science teaching. “It’s important to ensure that students take an
analytical approach and learn to ask

came from governmental departments, universities and industry,
learnt about the way EMBL works
from Head of International Relations
and Communications Silke Schumacher.

✏ EMBL Grenoble has recently been
host to Prof. Iqbal Chaudhury, head
of the foremost academic research
institution in Pakistan, the ICCBS at
the University of Karachi. A guest of
the French government, Prof Chaudhury is on a mission through France
to set up collaborations and interactions. Group leaders Imre Berger and
Christiane Schaffitzel are hosting two
graduates from his institute, Nadja
Ashraf and Humeera Waheed, who
received Fellowships of Excellence by
the French Embassy in Pakistan to
work at EMBL.

✏ Upcoming courses in the General
Training and Development Programme include:
Course

Date / site

Minute taking with
Confidence

8 Jan (EBI)

Excel Beginners

28 & 29 Jan (HD)

121 Advanced
Presentation Skills

28 & 29 Jan (EBI)

Interviewing Skills

1 Feb (EBI)

Presentation Skills

2 & 3 Feb (EBI)

In addition, the new term of inhouse language courses will start in
late January. See http://intranet.
embl.de/personnel/training_development/index.html for details.

How would you like to do your bit for the
EMBL International PhD Programme
(EIPP) – and get your next trip back home
for free?
Dean of Graduate Studies Helke Hillebrand would like to encourage students to
take part in the new EMBL PhD Ambassadors programme, which reimburses up to
€300 travel and materials expenses to those
who give a talk about the EIPP at an EMBL
member state university.
Ludovic Brun, a third-year predoc in the
Nédélec group, was the first such student to
take part when he went on 26 October to
the Université Paris 7/11, where he did his
masters degree in physics. He gave a tenminute presentation about EMBL, the PhD
programme and Heidelberg. “It was an audience of physics students, so moving into
molecular biology was something that many
of them hadn’t thought about, or thought
possible,” he says.
Next up are France Audrey Peltier and
Aino Inkeri Järvelin, who’ll be giving similar
talks at their former universities in Paris and
Tampere, where they studied genetics and
biotechnology respectively. Helke would like
to encourage more volunteers to come forward. “It’s a great way of giving something
back to our member states and enhancing
the visibility of predoc opportunities at
EMBL,” she says.
If you’d like to become a PhD Ambassador,
please contact helke.hillebrand@embl.de.

fromtheStaffAssociation
❑ Saturday, 30 January: Burns Night. The
longest-running annual event at EMBL
Heidelberg! The Scottish party of the year
with whisky, bagpipes, haggis and dancing. Tickets will be on sale in December.
❑ Monday, 8 March: Bernd-Uwe Jahn’s
Official Farewell and ATC opening
party for all staff. Staff from all EMBL
sites are invited to say goodbye to BerndUwe Jahn, our retiring Administrative Director, and join in to celebrate the opening
of the ATC. The evening event will include
dinner and live music, as well as tours of the
conference facilities.
❑ Keep up-to-date with events at www.emblheidelberg.de/~staff (site for EMBL pensioners: www.embl-heidelberg.de/~staff/
pensioners).
– Catherine Floyd

EMBL&cetera • December 2009

11

events@EMBL

people@EMBL

14-15 January EMBL Heidelberg
Meeting of the Nordic EMBL
Partnership for Molecular Medicine
All faculty welcome

Martin Beck will join EMBL Heidelberg’s Structural and Computational Biology Unit as group leader in January. Originally
from Leipzig, Martin studied biochemistry at the Martin Luther
University in Halle-Wittenberg, Germany, before going on to
study for his PhD in life sciences from the Max Planck Institute
for Biochemistry in Martinsried. Since 2006 he has been a postdoc at ETH in Zurich, and his group at EMBL will study macromolecular assemblies using electron microscopy and mass
spectrometry.

Carsten Sachse will also join the Structural and Computational
Biology Unit as group leader in electron microscopy at the beginning of next year. Currently a postdoc at the MRC’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, Carsten gained
his PhD in molecular biology from the Friedrich-SchillerUniversität in Jena, Germany and Brandeis University in
Waltham, USA. At EMBL, his group will study the degradative
pathway of pathological aggregates through autophagy using
single-particle cryo-EM.
As the next EMBO Director from 1 January 2010, Professor
Maria Leptin will establish a research group in the Directors’ Research Unit at EMBL Heidelberg. Her focus will be on complex
cell shapes and the genetic pathways that determine them. Maria
will be only the fifth director in EMBO’s forty-five year history,
and will take over from Hermann Bujard who has been Director
since 2007. “I am thrilled to continue the initiatives begun by previous directors that promote the molecular life sciences in Europe and worldwide,” says Maria.
Melanie Rauscher will take over as EMBL Heidelberg’s
Genome Biology Unit secretary from Sylvia Schattschneider
when she moves over to Cell Biology and Biophysics Unit in
the new year. Originally from Frankenthal, Melanie worked at
the Medical Research Center in Mannheim and then as a medical and administrative assistant for the US Army Hospital in
Rohrbach before coming to EMBL. “It’s a very open and international environment here, just as I imagined it would be!” she
says, having already spent three months shadowing Sylvia.

Burn bright, my light
Children from EMBL Heidelberg’s
Kinderhaus, their parents and teachers
lit up the campus with a traditional St.
Martin’s Day lantern parade on 10
November. Carrying their own homemade lanterns, the children were
commemorating in the traditional
German way the compassion St. Martin
showed towards a poor man by dividing
up his coat into two pieces.